Among Other Things… showed visions on gender and sexuality. The number of categories for gender identities has multiplied. For example, Facebook offers its users 71 options for gender identification in addition to the standard 'man' or 'woman'. But does this really contribute to the freedom of expressing your identity? Does everyone want to identify with a label?
With an exhibition and performance program, TENT engaged with the need for safety and recognition of the LGBT+ community, while simultaneously celebrating this group's optimistic and unconventional imagination of a world yet to come.
The LGBTQ+ community has a vibrant history of activism and struggle for justice and recognition, which is connected to feminism and civil rights movements. The radical survival strategies of the 1980s and 90s have given way to playful self-presentation and ways of living that do not conform to prevailing norms.
New technologies and digital platforms often play an important role in this: nowadays, LGBTQ+ groups frequently engage on online platforms such as YouTube and Instagram. At the same time, queer words and images that were once an expression of resistance or meant to claim a safe space for themselves are increasingly being co-opted by mainstream culture and marketing machines.
Embodiment and Queer Imagination
The artists in this exhibition reflect on LGBTQ+ bodies and communities in society, online, and in popular culture. They are interested in embodying otherness, questioning gender roles, and reappropriating queer words and images. In doing so, the personal and the political often merge.
Developed together with members of the Rotterdam LGBT+ community Rory Pilgrim for example a new work around the need for a recognizable physical place in the public space to come together. The collaboration resulted in the performance 'Holographic Futures'.
The collective All the Cunning Stunts showed a monumental wall work in low-tech Photoshop style, based on their fascination with queer stock image collections and idealized representations of queer bodies.
Olle Lundin creates a new interactive work for which he researches the use of hashtags by the queer community in online environments.
Floriane Misslin presented a polyptych in which she exposes the main strategies and values behind the genderless identities in contemporary fashion.
The video installations of Hannah James en Julius Thissen question gender roles and social expectations of female and male gender identities.
Geo Wyeth showed an installation and the performance 'Juice CrosxxxSing', around the figure of the crossing guard.
Alberto Garcia del Castillo en Steev Lemercier sang and read from 'Merman', a queer travelogue written by Alberto García del Castillo.
With her performance 'Repair :', invited Angelica Falkeling the audience in a TV set where the recordings guaranteed cheerful failure with a lot of lo-fi queer kitsch.
Among Other Things, I've Taken up Smoking was curated by TENT curator Jesse van Oosten.
Rory Pilgrim's new work was supported by the BKOR (Visual Arts and Public Space) programme of CBK Rotterdam.